GOP Megadonor Sheldon Adelson Dies at 87, Once Proposed to Build a Casino in RI
Tuesday, January 12, 2021
Sheldon Adelson, the casino billionaire, GOP mega-donor and leading supporter of Israel has died at 87.
Adelson in 2003 proposed building a $1 billion resort in northern Rhode Island to compete with the big Foxwoods and Mohegan Sun Indian casinos in Connecticut.
"I think Massachusetts and Rhode Island are literally in a race," Adelson told a state commission in 2003. "He who opens legalized gaming first drives the entire destination, and drives the entire market."
The New York Times reported that Adelson, "a cabdriver’s son who built the world’s largest empire of casinos and resort hotels in Las Vegas, Macau, Singapore and other gambling meccas and used his vast wealth to promote right-wing political agendas in America and Israel, died Monday night. He was 87. He died of complications from treatment for non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, the Las Vegas Sands said Tuesday in a statement announcing his death."
"He grew up tough, a Depression-era street urchin who hawked newspapers and fought roughnecks in Boston. Unfazed by risks, rivals or the law, Mr. Adelson (pronounced ADDLE-son) acquired the Las Vegas Sands Corporation and a fortune estimated in 2014 by Forbes at $36.6 billion and by Bloomberg Billionaires Index at $40.8 billion, making him the world’s eighth or ninth wealthiest person," reported the NY Times.
Trump and Adelson
The NY Times reported Adelson also became one of America’s heavyweight political spenders — the largest single donor in the 2012 elections — following the Supreme Court’s Citizens United ruling in 2010, which removed many limits on political contributions as unconstitutional infringements of free speech.
"In May 2016, after Donald J. Trump became the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Mr. Adelson told him in a private meeting in Manhattan that he was willing to contribute more to help elect him than he had to any previous campaign, a sum that could exceed $100 million, according to two Republicans with direct knowledge of Mr. Adelson’s commitment," reported the NYT. "He eventually gave the Trump presidential campaign only $25 million, and was still its largest donor."
